For a good chunk of romance anime, the story just sort of ends when the couple gets together, or at least after awhile of dating. This means you never get to see the married years where the couple falls into a cozy routine, but the love is – ideally – still there.
However, there are a few romance anime that progress into marriage and even showcase the wholesome and happy daily lives of married couples in love. If you are a romance anime junkie looking for romance anime the covers what a happy married life looks like, then check these great recommendations out.
Married Couple Romance Anime
Tonikaku Kawaii
Tonikaku Kawaii is unique as a romantic comedy since it speed runs through the “getting together” phase in the first episode. They meet, he almost gets hit by a bus, he is so captivated by her beauty that he asks her to marry him, she disappears for a bit and reappears with a wedding registration – all in the first episode.
From there, the series still actually focuses on their building relationship, but with the added stability of being legally married and already living together.
While young people getting married without really knowing each other could be a recipe for drama, that isn’t what Tonikaku Kawaii is about. Instead, you get to watch them get to know each other and live out their rather wholesome new married life.
My Bride is a Mermaid
In this arranged marriage anime, a boy was drowning in the sea when he was saved by a mermaid. However, by mermaid law and enforced by the mermaid’s yakuza family, when a mermaid is discovered by a human, one of them must die. To save both of their lives, he agrees to marry into her family.
While My Bride is a Mermaid is more comedy than romance, it doesn’t forget to focus on the innocent blooming romance between these two new lovers. It just often gets distracted by the antics of a zany yakuza family full of ocean folk.
Grandpa and Grandma Turn Young Again
One can only hope to find a partner they can grow old and gray with, and this anime is about just that. Like its very on-the-nose title says, Grandpa and Grandma Turn Young Again are about two old grandparents that are mysteriously turned young again.
It remains wholesome in that the pair just kind of keep doing their daily activities that they’ve been doing for decades. However, now they have both the free time and the physical ability to fully enjoy their golden years as well as spend time with their comically flabbergasted family.
Troublesome Old Man
What if the aforementioned series Grandpa and Grandma Turn Young Again wasn’t about an old married couple being young again and just followed their daily life as an old married couple? That’s Troublesome Old Man.
This series follows an old man who turns on the charm to make his wife’s heart flutter, even 50 years after their marriage.
The worst part of this series? Each episode is only a minute long.
I Can’t Understand What My Husband is Saying
I Can’t Understand What My Husband is Saying follows the occasionally comical marriage between an otaku and a pretty average office lady. She fell in love with how kind and caring he was, but continues to be baffled and mystified by the various quirks that come from living with an otaku.
This isn’t so much a series for those looking for swoon-worthy moments, but rather for those that want to enjoy the pretty average daily life of a normal married couple.
Clannad
Clannad doesn’t start off as a romance anime about a married couple. In fact, the entire first season is a high school-set romance where the male main character helps a series of girls with their occasionally very dramatic problems.
However, it does something rather rare in the romance genre – it continues past high school. In the second season, Clannad: After Story, the main character has married one of the girls he had been helping and they are carrying out their newlywed life together. Of course, this being the dramatic series that it is, Clannad uses that happy marriage to hurt you emotionally.
Itazura na Kiss
Similar to Clannad, Itazura na Kiss is a romance anime that follows the main characters getting together and dating in high school, then continues onwards to their marriage in college.
However, while Clannad likes to hurt you emotionally, Itazura na Kiss instead focuses on character drama to keep you invested in this long-term relationship. It rewards you with cute and romantic moments, then irritates you with tired drama tropes based on miscommunication and misunderstandings.
As an older romance anime, it definitely showcases a less than healthy romantic relationship, but some romance anime fans are there for exactly that.
My Wife is a High School Girl
As its on-the-nose title says, My Wife is a High School Girl follows the relationship between a seventeen-year-old high school girl and the physics teacher at school that she is secretly married to.
As sexual contact is forbidden by their family until she graduates, this already pretty dubious relationship doesn’t get even more questionable. As such, it mostly focuses on them trying to hide their relationship at school while bonding as a newly married couple at home.
Please Teacher
From one questionable student-teacher marriage that avoids ecchi to another questionable student-teacher marriage that doesn’t. Please Teacher has a lot of things its is juggling in its plot.
It follows an alien that disguises herself as a teacher, but is discovered by her student who is also a boy who suffers from a condition that forces his body to shut down for long periods of time. This has resulted in his stunted emotional growth in what is almost an adult body.
Anyway, the teacher’s alien identity is discovered by the student, and romance blooms over the shared secret. However, when the principal finds out, of course his solution is for them to get married.
All this results in a titillating romance about newlyweds with overstuffed plot points that it occasionally follows.
Love is Like a Cocktail
Every spouse has a side that they only to show to their significant other. In Love is Like a Cocktail, that “side” an office lady wife shows to her bartender husband is her cute drunken side.
While she claims to dislike alcohol at work, this office lady actually likes it. She gets to indulge it at home after a long day with a husband who makes her a variety of tasty cocktails to help her unwind and let her cute side out.
While not the most romance-focused anime series about a marriage, it shows off good drinks, good food, and a cute relationship of partners who support each other.
Way of The House Husband
Even a bad boy can change with the love of a good woman, as they say. Way of the House Husband follows a legendary yakuza who disappeared after a bloodbath and reappears as the apron-wearing, bento-making house husband of a busy office lady.
This series is pretty plotless and isn’t too focused on romance either. Instead, you get a comedic little series about a guy handling housekeeping activities with all the attitude of a long-time yakuza with none of the actual menace – all done in support of his busy wife.
Jingai-san no Yome
While there are actually a few series about the potential marriage between a human and a creature, most of those series were left off because the marriage was the icing on top of the relationship, which means the series usually ends at the wedding. Jingai-san no Yome is different in that it is fully about newlywed life to a creature.
Jingai-san no Yome follows the somewhat dubious marriage of a fifteen-year-old boy to a fluffy creature called Kanenogi that has chosen him as their wife.
While definitely not the most wholesome start to things, this series is really just fluffy daily life activities between a boy an a non-verbal creature.
Tadaima, Okaeri
While a boy’s love series about a married couple raising a kid would be perfectly wholesome, Tadaima, Okaeri does add an extra dash of weirdness to things. Although, it is an introduction to many to the omegaverse sub-genre of romance.
Tadaima, Okaeri isn’t just a boy’s love series about married life and raising a child together, it also features the stay-at-home spouse having a secondary gender that allowed them to give birth regardless of being a male.
However, while it could have just let them adopt a child, this aspect is used to give a little drama and further depth to what would otherwise be a pretty slice of life plot.
My Happy Marriage
With a title like ‘My Happy Marriage’ it sounds pretty promising for a married couple romance anime – and it is! The new, arranged marriage is actually a happy one. However, what the title doesn’t tell you is that everything else about the wife’s life was pretty unhappy.
Unloved by her family, her self confidence and self worth was in tatters when sent to her new cold, but kind husband. As he works to rebuild that, My Happy Marriage also begins to manifest a supernatural plot involving the main character’s awakening abilities and the intrigue her family has built around them.
While much of this series is focused on the romantic relationship, My Happy Marriage is also a romance anime for those that don’t mind the occasional moment of action and drama as well.
Taisho Maiden Fairy Tale
Similar to My Happy Marriage, Taisho Maiden Fairy Tale is also a historical Japan-set romance anime that follow a newly arranged marriage that goes well.
In Taisho Maiden Fairy Tale, the son of a prestigious surgeon has his hand ruined in the car crash that also killed his mother. With his son maimed and useless to him, he sends the boy to live on a rural estate alone where, of course, the grieving young man falls into a deep depression. However, his life is brightened slightly when his father sends him a fiancee that he purchased from a family that owed a significant debt to him.
While being given a purchased wife is not the most wholesome start, the pair prove good for each other as they start to bond and support each other with their various struggles.
Do you know more romance anime recommendations that follow married couples? Let fans know in the comments section below.
